Projectile S'Mores
by Nalanzu
Summary: “Okay, you blast the chocolate and I’ll shoot the marshmallow and if we time it right, they’ll both melt onto the cracker simultaneously.” Featuring the Blue Beetle and Booster Gold.


"No," Booster said, horrified.

"What? Why?" Ted had the gall to look surprised.

"Because I'm on monitor duty! And you – why are you here, anyway?"

"Broken ribs take a couple of days to fix?"

"No, I meant why are you _here_." Booster poked experimentally at the bandages around Ted's chest. "Doesn't that _hurt_?"

"Ow!" Ted winced back, glaring. "Only if you _touch_ it!" He took a step backwards, towards the door, and then paused. "Hey, when did you get so serious about monitor duty?"

"Batman," Booster muttered sulkily.

"Yes, but he's not here."

"He'll call in to check, wait and see."

"Pessimist."

"I still don't think flying s'mores is a good idea."

"I'm _bored_. And so are you," Ted said before Booster could tell him to go be bored somewhere else. "Don't tell me you aren't."

"Still," Booster said, but Ted had him and knew it.

"What could go wrong?" Ted dashed out of the room to collect the graham crackers, chocolate, and – so help him – the marshmallow shooter.

"I hate that question," Booster muttered. "Every time he asks it, something always does."

Ted brought string, too, and spent several minutes hanging the crackers from the ceiling. His first efforts involved drilling holes in the crackers and threading the string through. These did not go so well, as the crackers had a distinct tendency to break into pieces around the hole.

"Stop laughing, Booster."

"But it's funny."

Ted shoved a piece of broken cracker into Booster's mouth and a wrestling match ensued. Only the imminent death of the graham crackers – and possibly the marshmallow shooter – brought it to a halt. (Booster felt privately that the destruction of the marshmallow shooter, despite its many glorious applications, might not be an entirely undesirable result. On the other hand, brawling in the communication center was hardly less likely to get him in trouble than flying marshmallows, so it was a bit of a toss-up.)

Ted's next plan involved intricate little webs. Booster suggested that he just lean the crackers against the wall, but Ted pointed out that they'd have to install shelves, and that was much more permanent than hanging string from the ceiling. Booster countered with permanence not being much of an issue, as they were going to get in trouble anyway.

"You're such a pessimist," Ted said, backing away from the first cracker. It swung gently in front of the wall, to all appearances securely anchored in the pile of string.

"You said that already," Booster said, eyeing the cracker dubiously. It just sat there.

"You can't tell me I'm wrong," Ted said, already working on the second cracker.

Booster felt he very well could, but forbore actually saying the words aloud. Instead, he said, "Are you sure next to the door is a good idea?"

"See? Pessimist," was the only answer Ted would give him. "Okay, you blast the chocolate and I'll shoot the marshmallow and if we time it right, they'll both melt onto the cracker simultaneously."

While Booster had been waiting for the cracker to slide out of its harness and shatter on the floor, Ted had strung bits of chocolate up just in front of the graham cracker. _What the hell,_ Booster thought. If Batman saw this, he'd be in trouble anyway. And it looked like fun. He grinned. "I'll show you timing."

"That's the spirit!" Ted clapped him on the shoulder. Booster fiddled with his blasters, trying to lower the output to something that wouldn't disintegrate a marshmallow.

"Okay," he said. "Shoot."

His aim was flawless. The Booster Shot wasn't quite at the proper intensity. Ted poked at the black char on the wall. "I think it'll come off," he said after a moment.

"Uh huh." Booster fiddled with the blaster again. Skeets probably could have produced the desired result with no problems, but he didn't really want to explain to the little robot why he needed to melt chocolate with his blaster.

His aim would have been flawless with the second marshmallow, but all that came out of the blaster was a sad little trickle of smoke. The marshmallow bounced off the chocolate and skittered to a halt somewhere under a console.

"Oh, great, now we'll have mice," Ted said mournfully.

"We will not," Booster said. "Mice don't eat marshmallows."

"Wharf rats might."

Booster couldn't suppress a flinch. "They don't eat marshmallows either!"

"That's what you think." Ted smirked.

"Shut up and shoot."

A marshmallow sailing into an extremely low level Booster Shot and impacting with melting chocolate onto a graham cracker was a beautiful thing. The gooey mix didn't stick to the cracker, though. Before they could grab it, the entire mess slid onto the floor.

"Hmm." Ted eyed the dripping cracker. "Maybe if we angled it."

Booster scooped the failed experiment up with a tissue and dumped it in the one tiny trashcan in the corner of the room. "You'd have to suspend it from all four corners and aim your marshmallow really well."

"Hey, I can shoot a marshmallow into a target." Ted tossed the cracker after the tissue and started stringing up a new one.

"What if we melted the chocolate to the cracker to begin with and just shot at the marshmallow?"

"Wouldn't that knock it off course?"

"Not if you compensated properly." Booster melted the back of a chocolate square and affixed it to Ted's cracker. It stuck. "See? Now you hang it up."

"It's slipping..."

"Quick, then, before it falls off!"

Booster had to reconstruct the following few seconds later, after the (predictable, given their track record) uproar had died down; at the time it went by just a little too fast for him to parse it properly.

Ted aimed the marshmallow shooter.

Booster stood behind him, angling to where he thought would get the soon-to-be-melting marshmallow onto the cracker.

Ted fired.

Booster fired.

The marshmallow, dissolving, careened off towards the open doorway.

Guy Gardner started to walk through the door.

The marshmallow splattered directly into their resident Green Lantern's eyes.

Guy let out a roar – whether he'd properly assessed the situation or whether he thought some supervillain had invaded the communication center was unclear – and aimed giant green glowing fists at both of them. He had remarkable aim for someone who appeared to be effectively blind.

Booster threw himself in front of Ted and his cracked ribs, firing his blasters in Guy's general direction.

Ted tripped backwards, somehow managing to toss the marshmallow bag in front of Booster.

The blasters' circuits surged, sending a teeny power spike towards the intensity output.

The bag of marshmallows exploded.

Booster's brain caught up with his body just in time to realize that he was partly on top of a prone and cursing Ted, that Guy was cursing both loudly and fluently, that the majority of the communication room was spattered in quickly cooling marshmallows, and finally that Batman was standing in the doorway. A glob of marshmallow slid down his mask and hit the floor with a very audible plop.

"We're gonna get yelled at, aren't we," Ted said faintly.

"Big time," Booster agreed, just as quietly.

Batman was smirking. For one brief moment, Booster hoped the situation was ludicrous enough to amuse even the Dark Knight and they'd get away with it. It was not to be.

Several hours later, Booster dropped his sixth ruined toothbrush into the wastebasket and checked the communication room for the final time. It glistened, as it well should have after that thorough of a scrubbing. Ted was rubbing at his left side, seventh toothbrush already in the trash. "Ow," he said.

"At least we're finished in here," Booster said.

With an uncanny sense of timing, Batman poked his head in the door. "The two of you are on rotating monitor duty for the rest of the week, twenty-four hours a day. If I find out that both of you are in here simultaneously, I will drop you from the roof of the embassy myself." He paused. "I might, however, catch you before you hit the ground." He vanished almost before he finished speaking.

"Was that a joke?" Ted whispered.

"I don't know," Booster whispered back.

"You start now," Batman said from outside.

"Not it!" Ted said instantly, and beat a hasty retreat.

"Not- hey!" Booster sulked. Now he was back to square one, stuck on monitor duty and bored.

Ted leaned past the doorway. "I can go first, if you want," he said. "It was my idea."

Booster hesitated. "Nah," he said finally. "I got it."

"Well, I have a project to work on," Ted said. "I think I can modify the marshmallow shooter..."

Booster could only bury his face in his hands. "We're gonna get yelled at again," he said under his breath.

Ted heard him. "Pessimist," he said cheerfully, and continued.

FINIS


End file.
